Birdseye Maple Flooring - Best Finish Tips

A good friend of mine found about 3,000 feet of 130 year old birdseye maple flooring. She wants to know the best way to bring out the natural color of the wood and protect it? Any tips and advice on refinishing that I could pass along to her? Thanks in advance!

8 replies so far

Oil based wears better under foot traffic than any of the water or oil modified finishes. I personally prefer the amber look of oil based finishes as opposed to the cloudy milky colored water based ones. Always had good luck with Minwax. just my $.02

Or you could add the amber tone to any waterborn you choose and spray it safely with low VOC’s. My preferred floor finish is http://aquacoat.com/collections/products/products/wood-floor-shield . Or you could seal with toned, dewaxed shellac, to get the color you want, then top coat with waterborn.Where’s Clint? – He’ll have a three word answer for this question.

But I have done floors in shellac too. It will pop the eyes well… Some will say it doesn’t wear well. It does.But if you want looks, but the shellac on, (zinser seal coat (no wax)) then put oil based poly on top.

Shellac pops wood better than just oil based poly… so the 2 would really be nice.

Now if you are taking just using the flooring for projects, then SHELLAC.. it pops the eyes.Also you can use dyes to pop the eyes too, then shellac…

Taber abrasion testing by Taber Industries indicates the some of the poly-isocyanurate waterborn finishes like Bona Kemi-Traffic or Dura Seal Xtera have taber abrasion resistance ratings much higher than oil modified finishes. This is using the Taber Grit feeder method SIS 92 35 09 and ASTM D4060. My experience in using thousands of gallons of waterbased and oil modified products bares out the test results. The new waterbased floor finishes are more durable, even though they apply with a thinner build.

In saying that, I would also use a sealer that would enhance the grain of birseye, as waterborn finishes will mute the color and not enhance it, but will give the least amber look. I would then topcoat with one of the waterbased floor finishes for durability.

I do not know much about other types of waterbased urethanes, as my experience is only with floor finishes.